


Reunions

by ashkatom



Series: Changes | Reunions [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-13
Updated: 2012-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-31 02:38:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashkatom/pseuds/ashkatom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part two of the Changes|Reunions twoshot. Orphaner Dualscar stumbles into their bubble, bloody and broken, and Psi is unsurprised to realise that he hates this man with every atom of his body. Some things never change, and that’s still okay as well. Suf/Psi It’s Complicated, Psi/Dualscar kismessitude. Confusingly sappy. Not NSFW at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reunions

There are a lot of last things you remember. You’ve ranked them all in your head several ways: chronologically, how much you like the memory, how much you liked the trolls involved, how much of you existed at the time to remember…

The last-last thing you remember is immense weight, screaming, and a dying spark. The one thing left you thought was true giving out on you and somehow you felt glad, glad you were gone, glad she was stuck and alone and alive.

The worst last memory you have, hands down (what are hands you don’t have them any more maybe you never did and all you’ve ever had are engines and wings), is of Signless, screaming out his love for his Disciple, Dolorosa, you. Every time you come across it your engine stalls and you need to start up again but you’re weeping and you don’t know what crying even is.

But the most terrifying last memory you have is of seadweller hands pushing your body into tangled tyrian wires. A voice crooning that he’ll take care of you as the wires devour your arms – wings –  _arms_. And a captain, lowering tyrian goggles onto your eyes, becoming the last thing that you,  _you_  as _yourself_  will ever see.

Drifting in this void, you forget yourself sometimes.

But you are never going to forget him.

—

It occurs to you that your engine hasn’t been running for a long time.

Deep down in the hold, the pilot stares at his hands and flexes his fingers. He stands there for hours, covered in the fuchsia wires he tore free, and tries to cope with being a troll and a ship.

He doesn’t do too well.

—

For the first seven nights, he – no,  _you_ , you with the body and the legs and the hands, the you that was the pilot, the one they (they who?) called Psiionic, you curl up in her throne on the bridge, toying with the controls that used to control you. The ship still moves without you and you’ve never felt so useless in your life.

Death.

Ever.

The next few nights are spent doing crazy as hell spaceship tricks with black holes and gravity manipulation. You might as well get to do something cool with the encyclopaedic knowledge of space that you have now.

Floating in the middle of nowhere, inside and out, you realise that you’re lonely, and stunts at zero G are just making it worse.

This fucking battleship is too full of ghosts.

—

You enter the co-ordinates with hands that shake afterwards.

Deliberately, you pull up the ship’s log, and annotate the latest leg of the journey.

_???? – 61.2, 413.2222, 1025.69696969  
two the la2t fuckiing place ii wa2 ever happy_

—

You crash into sand, just you, a man and no machine.

When he finds you, you let yourself sleep for the first time in a thousand sweeps.

—

You manage to screw everything up, like the idiot you are.

Then your Signless, your Sufferer, tells you that you’re alive, you’re not alone, with words and hands and lips and everything is the way it was meant to be, and you’re never being a battleship again, not if it means leaving him.

—

He sends out signals, constantly pinging your universe of sand and caves, seeing if anyone made it.

Impossibly, someone replies.

You spend the rest of the night floating in sopor and dreaming of gravity wells.

—

Orphaner Dualscar is dead and broken and you’re not sorry in the slightest. You hide in the shadows as Suf drags the taller troll in. Covered in purple blood, hunched over the open wound in his stomach, he doesn’t look as imposing as he did once

when he lowered those goggles onto your face

and  _smiled_.

Hate rolls through you, anchoring you to your body. You watch Suf tend to the seatroll, and resolve to make the fucker pay.

—

You wait until early evening, when Suf is asleep in Dolorosa’s old room, nested in a pile of imagined fabrics. Normally he’d be on the seating block, but Dualscar’s draped over it, bloody and ripped and torn apart in a way you’ve never seen the captain that put such stock in presentation.

You kneel over Dualscar and wait for him to wake up.

It’s sudden and still when he does, his orbshields snapping open to reveal blank white, not the rich,  _so fucking royal_  purple you were expecting. When he sees you he tries to throw you off, but you bind him to the couch with psionics before he can so much as blink.

“Tho you do remember me,” you say, in the blank monotone of a computer gathering data.

“A course I fuckin’ do!” he snaps. “Get off me, you fuckin’ pissblood, I got fins ta do that don’t invvolvve you tryin’ ta rape me.”

You start laughing, low at first, getting louder and less controlled minute after minute until Dualscar looks terrified and you cut yourself off. “Thorry for the mixed thignalth, DS, you mutht have crothed my fucking wireth when you shoved me into that twice-damned ship and left me to rot.”

His lip curls. “You deserved i-”

“For a thouthand thweepth.” You smile, sickly. “I think I went a little mad.”

“Go cry ta your fuckin’ candyblood an’ let me up.” He strains against your bonds, but holding back a pissed-off seadweller is nothing after piloting a spaceship. “Wwhat do you wwant, an apology?”

You lean in to him, nub to nub, and he slackens against your psionics, trying to get away. “She’th thtill alive, you know. Rathing back to Alternia for the next little heireth and the next fucked-up generation.”

Dualscar swallows. “And?”

You grin again, this time showing off your rows of teeth. “Condenthe’th doing all thith for her heireth and she never even met the grub. You met her, thlaved for her, and what did you get? A pat on the head? Did she ever even know your name?”

“The Empress doesn’t consort wwith anyone beloww her,” he snarls in your face.

“Your preciouth, untouchable Empreth conthorted with me.” You watch the tide come in, the horror dawn on his face, and a vicious joy leaps inside you. You want to rip away everyone he’s ever cared about, you want to force him to live a thousand sweeps of vectors and blood-wires and isolation, you want to see him cry and beg and smile down like the most fucked-up deity to ever exist.

“An’ wwhat wwould your titchy little mutantblood havve ta say aboat this?” You flinch, and he smirks. “You’re so fuckin’ flushed for him it’s embarrassin’, an’ here you are, spreadin’ hate an’ discord…”

You wrap a hand over his mouth and spark dangerously. It takes several drawn-out minutes before you say, tightly, “At leatht I treat my flush like a troll, and not thome figurehead I want to fuck.”

“Shore, an’ wwhat wwas his name again?” Dualscar makes a thoughtful face. “Signless? Like the fuckin’ church? What a grand fuckin’ coinseadence, call me a rustblood an’ cull me wwhere I stand.”

You punch him in the face blindly, letting go of your psionics and just punching him until your knuckles bleed. He fights back, and there’s something so fucking alive in the purple and yellow and not a single fucking fuchsia wire to be seen that you let him. You can feel the pain and the hate and the rage and it’s so glorious you want to scream.

You don’t realise you are screaming until Suf comes in and drags you off Dualscar, kicking and clawing the whole way.

—

After a very stern talking-to from Suf directed at both of you, which involved lines like “Please don’t tear each other’s faces off, it goes against everything I ever worked for and I will not tolerate it in my universe. No, Psi, I don’t care if someone’s obviously tried to rip his face off before, it will not be happening here. What do you mean I sound like Dolorosa,” Suf drags you away from Dualscar and buries you in his cloth pile. It smells like the perfume Dolorosa always wore, and it hits you how much Suf must miss her.

He sits opposite you in the pile and wraps a green blanket around the both of you. “You want to tell me what that was about?”

You sigh, but there’s obviously not going to be hiding anything from him when he’s in full-on moirail mode. “It’ll jutht make you feel shitty.”

“I came out to see you and Dualscar ripping each other to shreds.” He folds his arms. “I wasn’t sure if I should have broken it up or gotten the two of you a pail.”

You gape, a yellow flush rising on your cheeks to compliment your bruised orbsocket. “SF!”

“So tell me why you hate him so much.” Suf is an implacable force of nature, and his shooshpap nearly felled an empire. Against his pity in a one-on-one feelings jam, you stand no chance. “I’ll tell him to be on his way if you want.”

“No!” The cry bursts out of you before you can stop it, although you cover your mouth with both hands afterwards as if that will help.

Without hesitation, Suf wraps his arms around you. “Psi, I’m just saying, looks like there are complicated feelings here. I’m not an expert or anything but hey, pretty sure that wasn’t this pity thing I’ve heard so much about.”

You lower your hands and fix your gaze at a point below Suf’s chin. “He turned me into a ship.” You look at him straight in the eye and beg him to understand. “SF, he turned me into a fucking ship and handed me over to the Empreth and I can’t, I can’t jutht…” Suf is looking more and more horrified as you go on, and you belatedly recall his reaction to your last (only,  _only_ , it’s not going to happen again) Helmsman relapse.

You don’t think this is going to be the makeouts sort of reaction.

Suf gets up and leaves. After a moment, there is a shout of, ‘OWW, COD!’ and he returns, grim-faced but maybe smirking a little. It’s hard to tell with him.

“I kicked him in the bone shield for you.”

“I can do it mythelf,” you point out. “Without getting up.”

“Yeah.” He lies all over you. “But I wanted to.”

You tilt his head up and kiss him because you’ve never loved anyone like you’ve loved him, your angry signless red-blooded boy on a crusade to save everyone, even after death. He responds unashamedly, kissing the tips of your fingers and trailing his hands over your legs, every touch saying you’re here, you’re with me, you’re alive even if you’re dead. He’s saved you more times than you can count and all you can do is let him know that it’s worth it.

You hope.

—

Dualscar’s in your nutrition block the next evening, rattling around the cupboards and sporting bruises that match yours. He scowls at you like he owns the place when you enter, and you can’t resist hip-checking him out of the way of the thermal block to get at the milk you thought up last week. Eating might not be necessary, but the routine helps.

His presence in the nutrition block suggests you’re not the only one who thinks this way. The idea of agreeing with him about anything is unsettling, and you chug your milk instead of thinking about it.

“Cod, that’s disgustin’. Don’t you lowwbloods know howw ta use a glass?”

You give him a deadpan look, not that there’s much else you can do with your blank orbs, and upend the carton of milk over your head. “Whoopth, thilly me, I’m too lowblooded to drink anything properly.”

The purpleblood opens his mouth, then closes it again. Finally he says, “I wwas goin’ ta use that.”

You give him a one-fingered salute and wander over to inspect the nearest cupboard, your hair still dripping milk. “You want it, come and get it.”

He chokes at that. “Cod, you don’t fin wwe’re acshoally…”

You turn slowly to look at him. It would probably be a lot more intimidating if you weren’t dripping in milk.

“One fuckin’ brawl an evveryone fins you’re kismeses.” He grabs an onion from the cupboard beside you and starts cutting it up. You’re no expert in the culinary arts, but you’re pretty sure he’s wielding that knife more viciously than he needs to. “I’m naut in need of a kismesis. Ta put it kindly, fuck off.”

You sputter a bit before managing to put words together that aren’t, ‘no,’ and ‘you.’ Finally you hiss, “You are the latht person I would want to touch me.” Your psionics start crackling as you take a measured step forward. “You’re the latht troll I want here.” Dualscar finally faces you, knife held at the ready but not in defense, and you hate that he doesn’t think you’re a threat. “You thtole my family, you thtole my body, and you thtole my life. The only reason you’re thtill here ith becauthe SF hath a thing for taking care of thtrayth that can’t look after themthelveth.”

He sneers. “You an’ your lowwblood cadre stole my fuckin’ life. I wwas in disgrace ‘cause a you. Con wwouldn’t glub at me, Spin fuckin’ krilled me, an’ noww all I havve left is liseanin’ ta a lowwblood beachin’ at me wwhile I try ta make some coddamn breakfast. So shorey you wwere a ship, laddybuck, I wwas just the one keelhauled under it.”

“I thtill think I’m a ship thometimeth.” You keep talking, trying to get him to understand why he’s so fucking hateful and how he ruined you and you’re only just now gluing your halves together, Psi and Helmsman becoming something in-between that loathes him with every molecule of your body. “When I can’t go to thleep I calculate flight pathth in my head. I wake up from nightmareth of thailing into black holeth. Thometimeth I jutht thit around waiting for thomeone to tell me where to go next and it ith  _all your fault_!”

He slams the knife into the counter, point-first, and now he’s desecrating this place that Dolorosa carved out and made beautiful with her own two hands because carpenter drones would have brought questions. You didn’t think it was possible to hate him any more, but you manage. “Fin! So you’re part computer! So fuckin’ wwhat, at least you’re naut-” He cuts himself off and turns away abruptly, his hands gripping the counter so tightly his knuckles go pale.

“Not what?” you ask, and your voice crackles with psionics you can barely control.

“Alone,” he says, and stands stiffly, as if waiting for a blow.

You stare at his back for a moment and then stomp out of the nutrition block.

—

“-then he flipth to pity and I don’t even-!” You throw your hands up in disgust. Suf nods along next to you, occasionally making placating noises. “What the fuck, SF, jutht… I can’t thtop hating him.”

He leans his chin on a hand and doodles on a piece of paper. “I already told you, I’ll kick him out or get you a pail, whatever you need.”

“You’re not helping!”

“Hey, I don’t know anything about the quadrants. You want world peace? I got your back. Wanting to know whether you should pail Dualscar because you hate him? I don’t even know. That is so far out of my field of expertise I can just see it on the event horizon of my life, twinkling away next to cooking something without everything I touch turning to poison and just down from brushing my hair so it looks like hair and not some strange new breed of woolbeast.”

“Could you not with the thpathe joketh?”

“Sorry. Normal horizon. Plain old horizon.” He sighs and shoves a hand through his hair. “Look, I think it’s good having someone else around. I think you’ve been a lot more… yourself, with whatever this weird hatelove shit is behind you. And I think it could be good for him, too.” He waggles his eyebrows. “Get over your issues the old-fashioned way.”

“He thaid he didn’t want to,” you finally spit out. Suf starts laughing and you throw a pen at him. “Shut up!”

He laughs so hard he actually has to wipe away tears and even if you’re the butt of the joke, you haven’t heard him laugh like that since you were both actually alive and Disciple’s hair got caught in an oscillating cooling device. You have to punch him in the shoulder three times before he gets control of himself, and then you lean on him until he gives up and wraps an arm around you.

“Why did it have to be him?” you ask.

He squeezes your shoulders briefly. “Maybe he needed to be here.”

“You’re way too forgiving.”

“I know.” He sighs, and you can see why everybody would turn up here and ping him back, he’s got his own local gravity that draws everyone in and keeps them in endless orbit and himself in the middle, grabbing everyone and pulling them along and forgiving them even if they’re not worth it. “It’s kind of my thing.”

—

The next night, when you and Suf are tangled up on the seating block and watching a movie with far too many explosions and not enough badass ladies (to be fair, you can never have enough badass ladies), Dualscar comes out and sits in the chair beside the couch, looks at the two of you, and then watches the movie.

You tense up, ready to say something, but Suf rubs his thumb along the back of your hand and you get his unspoken message and settle down, concentrating on the movie. It turns out that Suf and Dualscar are the two jerks that can’t shut up during a movie, and they shout things at the screen and at each other and you tune them out in the middle of an argument that quadrant-flipping would have added  _so much_  to the movie.

Afterwards, he makes dinner, and there just happens to be enough left over for you and Suf. Suf elbows you when you roll your eyes and you eat the food without overtly checking for poison. It’s pretty okay. You guess.

—

You’re getting ready to sleep when a scuff on the floor makes you turn. Instead of Suf, Dualscar is standing there, the tips of his horns barely clearing your doorway. You drop the hem of your shirt and fold your arms, waiting for him to speak. When he doesn’t, you rub your temples with one hand.

“Look, DS. It’th morning, all thith light ith hurting my eyeth, and I want to thleep. Either thpit it out or fuck off.”

He takes another step into your respiteblock and you step towards him, unwilling to let him gain any ground or give him any space in here. After looking around and taking in the bare stone walls, so different to the rest of the hive, he finally meets your eyes.

“It must’a fuckin’ sucked bein’ a ship.”

He doesn’t offer an apology.

You don’t ask for one.

You pointedly turn your back on him and strip off your shirt. You know you still have the spinal taps in your skin, two rows of tiny metal sockets running up each side of your spine. You never bothered imagining them away. You’re not sure you want to.

“It did. If you’ll excuthe me-” You suck in a gasp as he trails his fingers over the sockets. You didn’t even hear him move closer. “Fuck, handth off!”

His hands settle on your hips instead, claws lightly resting on the bone that juts out there. You want to rip his hands off and feed them to him, or show him what you’re meant to do with hands on hips. You’re not sure.

“My last kismesis krilled me,” he says quietly. His claws dig in slightly, kneading at your skin. “You havve all the reasons ta wwant ta do the same.”

You twist and look up at him. He’s hopeful and wary and no matter how  _good_ he’s being he’ll always be the one you hate, the one who started you on the road to hell. You let your eyes drip sparks and lick one of your fangs, watch as he gulps, and revel in the power. “Don’t worry about a thing, DS. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be begging for me to kill you.”

He shoves his mouth to yours, all teeth and tongue and hard finesse, and the last sense of  _wrongness_  disappears as everything clicks into place. You are Psiionic and Helmsman, you’re dead but feel alive, you hate this man and love another, and everything will be fine.

—

_end 2hiip log_


End file.
